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Google Analytics Alternatives - Measuring Beyond "Last Click Wins"

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Web analytics and attribution management have received more attention this year as companies look to measure results with greater accuracy. However, I have yet to come across a list of vendors that offer robust analytics platforms that measure beyond the “last click wins” reporting method. Based on my research these firms offer analytics reporting beyond the last-click wins attribution method, and some offer much more beyond that.

The Background - What is “Last Click Wins?"

Google Analytics(GA) utilizes the “last click wins” method of attribution. It’s simply a measurement model giving “credit” to the last keyword and/or referrer to your site before a conversion occurs.

Here’s a quick example: Visitor A searches Google researching a product and discovers your site because of your content and organic SEO efforts, but the visitor doesn’t buy. Later that day, Visitor A researches prices and clicks an Adwords ad, doesn’t buy, but remembers the site. Next day, Visitor A remembers your site/company name, searches it, finds Product X, and buys.

So, what does GA tell you? In a nutshell: The conversion tracking you set up tells you that Visitor A came from Google, searched for your company name, and bought Product X. Your brand name got the credit for the sale. Nowhere does your Adwords ad get credit, or your organic SEO efforts for the initial search and site discovery. I know, I know, GA can tell you a lot more information than just that, but you’re still missing the first few steps in the conversion process.

Why Measure “Beyond” the Last Click?

In addition to getting the real picture behind the branded keyword conversions and getting your SEO efforts the credit, you may have other missing or misleading data! You may be spending time, money, and effort on organic and paid search efforts that don’t show any conversions in GA. Should you keep up those efforts or cut them? If you said cut them, hold on.

That general keyphrase or vanity keyword doesn’t convert, you say. Banner ads, laughable! But what if they were the first introduction of your brand and site to the customer? Is it still the right decision to pull funding from Keyword A even though it can be proven to lead to visits that convert later on?

What Are my Options?

With Google Analytics, by default, you get thelast-click wins view. You can however, override that setting but then your data still isn’t complete. You cannot get the first-click and last-click data at the same time in the same profile. It’s all or nothing.

For a basic analytics system, Google Analytics is hard to beat. I’m not going to say that it fails for SEO, but you really shouldn’t be relying solely on it, or any javascript-based data capture analytic system anyway. Google Analytics sure has its benefits. After all, it’s free, it can be tweaked to view actual rankings, you can integrate it with your CRM, and with the additional features added recently it’s more robust than ever. But again, you may be missing some important data, especially on sites with long purchase paths such as those selling services rather than physical goods.

GA Alternatives that Measure Beyond the Last Click

The idea of multi-point attribution is gaining steam, and more and more vendors are entering the fray. A lot of them are designed to better measure PPC spend, but can be extremely useful even if you don’t do any PPC at all. Keep in mind that it’s not my intention to recommend any of these solutions, just to have them listed in one place so you can get your research and evaluations kick started. Some may be better suited to compliment existing analytics packages, while others could potentially replace entire systems beyond web analytics packages. Some are even so robust that they include their own data warehouse systems and CRMs.

The Big Guys

CoreMetrics is a big player in the web analytics game, and they offer a flexible attribution platform that can report on data beyond the last click.

One of most robust attribution systems is ClearSaleing. Voted “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” for its attribution-based advertising portfolio management platform at SES San Jose, they’re at the forefront of the attribution management game and have tight PPC integration, robust reporting, and even a built-in CRM and data warehouse functionality.

The Up-and-Comers

Who else has been providing a look beyond the last click for a number of years? None other than Yahoo! Web Analytics. The Assists metric can “measure the total number of times that display ads or search keywords contribute to the conversion of another ad or keyword”. Less robust than the rest on this list, still a good (Free!) product and hopefully one that Yahoo! doesn’t end up selling off.

Visual IQ’s IQ Envoy “moves beyond simple attribution by tracking all digital exposures (not just clicks) for an individual across the digital landscape."

Atlas Advanced Analytics lets you choose last click attribution or beyond. Be warned through, their site so fluent in corporate-speak my head nearly exploded. Worth a look though.

X+1 laughs in the face of having a search friendly name, but their tagline is “make every interaction count.” So, that might mean something… but I can’t really tell from their site. If you like exploring every single option before making a decision, dig into this one a bit too.

Did I miss any? What have been your experiences?

About John Santangelo —
John lost a few bets and was put in charge of search and social media marketing for a big staffing firm. He can be found ignoring his own site at johnsantangelo.me

31 Comments

Yes, GA doesn't do everything you want (though hacking it apart is very powerful) but you need to think long and hard about whether those paid-for solutions will do what you want and whether the cost is worth it.

We have worked with many enterprise level clients who have a bunch of those different analytics packages you mention and VERY VERY FEW of the clients who have paid money for analytics has managed to set it up to do anything which GA can't do.

Enterprise level analytics packages can be REALLY expensive but they're also often REALLY complicated. You need to ensure if you pay for them that you have the resources to make sure it works correctly and to make sure that what it's offering you is actually actionable.

I have worked with alot of clients that are in the same situation. I have even seen one of them pay for omniture for months before getting it set up on thier site.

I now sugest that they just get GA untill we have "optimized thier analitics." Ya i know its bogus but it makes them feel good as the save money on something they wouldn't use anyway. Then for the few clients that are ready and willing we tell them they can look into the other solutions.

I agree with you Tom that a lot of the enterprise analytics platforms are incredibly complex and the cost and labor to get them going can be very great. I've worked with a couple in the past and it was a pretty painful experience.

That said my preference in analytics is Clicky. It's inexpensive (most sites can get away with the $60/yr plan), it's real time, the data is presented pretty well (not as pretty as GA but adequate), and their API is really good.

If I were to give one downside, sometimes it is pretty slow to load on the page. So be sure it's the last thing on your page to load.

Excellent point, it's amazing just how much one can get out of GA.. am very much looking forward to the "intelligence" tab that basically does a lot of the analysis for you (in an automated kind of way)

Also, if your daily duties involve managing multiple GA accounts on the fly, a new free tool has been developed to help you simplify.

I tend to agree with the point that Avinash Kaushik often makes - if you have to choose between spending money on analytics packages and spending money on good analysts, go for the analysts. Almost all packages do tons more than the average person knows how to make heads or tails out of.

At Propellernet we've been working with DC Storm to help develop their attribution service and we've seen some brilliant things come of it. You can really see the how well each of your traffic sources is actually performing.

They allow you to analyse data in a number of ways including letting you see the entire customer journey as well as first click and last click results.

Don't forget though to take into consideration brand searches and direct traffic as these are often the last click. ClearSaleing have put on a few webinars and performed live opinion polls regrading how much weighting should be given to a particular traffic based on it's place in the customer journey which showed some interesting results.

My understanding of all currently available analytics packages are that none of them are complete.

Javascript can only measure first entrance to last click.

Cookies can measure beyond that, but there are an appreciable number of browsers that either block or dump cookies upon closing these days.

IP address only works for static connections (Personally I run on DSL but reboot my router every day so I'd be counted as a new visitor daily.)

So no matter what you pick, you're most likely going to have to compromise.

Skipping past the issue of Google being the keeper of your information, GA is extremely robust, and is free. This combination makes it a real winner for many, many companies that don't have the budget for the pricier packages out there.

I would have to agree with @Tom_C that even if you have the options for larger clients often you dont have the time, budget or resources to ensure that everything is setup.

For live solutions also consider Woopra, as it is has a fast growing user base and the desktop application places it ahead of most of its competitors in the ability to be quicker to sort and view data.

I would say that Yahoo Analytics appears to be one of the leading solutions and I hope they continue to innovate and open their product up to more advertisers who are not using their Ad platform.

Possibly understanding more about online user behaviour GA appears to be focusing more about those who don't click with "view through conversion" and "google campaign insights".

This is an interesting topic and it's good to see so many SEOMozers sharing their thoughts on this. Being a little bit late to the party, I just thought I'd add in that we've looked at a number of options on this. It should be a huge area in the analytics world but still isn't and I think this will be the year.

We're currently using DC Storm and although it's still early days with their tool, we're seeing big benefits already. It is amazing how long the user journey is before they make the sale and how much happens before the last click.

Great article. We definitely need to do more to account for multi-point attribution. I'm curious how others use this. If 3 points get credit for a conversion do you weight the last click more or equal to the other 2 points? Do you change your acquisition threshold for those keywords/placements?

Social Search, I think that's a decision that helps answer itself over time as you look at the data. I don't believe there is one right answer for every site to say first click gets x% and last click gets y% of the credit.

Also, to others credit, no analytics package will give you your money's worth if you don't have the person/people in place that know how to get that information that can lead to better decisionmaking.

Ken and Martijn, sorry if I wasn't clear. All of the alternatives listed under the GA alternatives do just that.

Of course what Tom mentioned is very true... all of these solutions cost money (except Yahoo), and some cost quite a bit. Large ecommerce sites may consider this expense worth it, while smaller sites may have more of a challenge funding such an expense.

I'm still a big fan of Statcounter which tracks data by visitor IP as easily as by page load or browser used. I've also started using Clicky, which is more polished looking but not quite as intuitive.

Both of these offer free and paid accounts so it suits the beginner and professional's needs. Not as robust as GA but these may compliment or supplement GA to "fill in the gaps". Or at least make it easier to find what you're looking for.

I think Google will get there eventually. If you're running display ads through AdWords the new view-through-conversion reporting is at least a step in the right direction for an online source that doesn't often get the credit it's due.

This is definitely a hot topic of search right now, it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the next few years.

Correction on something above. Yahoo Full Analytics support KW Assists… keywords that did not directly lead to a conversion but were searched prior to the keyword that lead to the conversion. I should point out that this seems to only work with Yahoo Full Analytics (not Yahoo Web Analytics) and only for Yahoo paid search marketing efforts as well. Although, I should point out that a default report in YWA called "number of visits till conversion" is pretty damn cool, but leaves me wanting much more. Off to try out Will Chritchlow's How to do First Touch Tracking in Google Analytics

What's your (I'm talking to everyone) experience with running several analytics tool on the same website? There is of course a risk of things loading slower, especially if the analytics tools is on a third-party host.